Chapter 2
DREW
Istewed the entire way to my next meeting, half because I couldn’t believe that I’d been duped into giving Mrs. Barclay and her beasts another shot, and half because I couldn’t stop thinking about the gorgeous stranger who’d forced me into it.
I was a master negotiator, so how was it possible that she’d broken me so quickly?
Yeah, she was fucking stunning, but I’d spent plenty of time with gorgeous women. This one, though? There was something about her unwillingness to back down, and the way she stuck up for that little old lady, that had me giving into her in spite of myself.
I consoled myself with the reminder that I’d barely given in. Those dogs were a constant nuisance. I had a feeling they’d be back to terrorizing the check-in area by the end of the day, which meant I’d get my way before long.
Not that I was being intentionally cruel to Mrs. Barclay and her trio of menace. I didn’t hate dogs. But having them underfoot where someone could get hurt or something broken was bad for business.
I leaned back against the seat and sighed. I was on my way to a meeting that was critically important to the luxury hotel/resort empire I ran as CEO but also invisible to many of my guests.
Mattresses.
It was time for Ashford Resorts to upgrade every mattress in every room across all of our properties, and while my team had done the research, it was now time to make a commitment to one manufacturer.
I could’ve left the final decision to my team, but my fingerprints were on every decision, major and minor.
And this one was major, a budget line item that raised eyebrows at the shareholder’s meeting.
Some might call my involvement micromanaging, I called it being accountable.
I was deeply invested in my guests’ comfort.
Especially for a decision as important as a good night’s sleep.
Or not sleeping, in many sexy instances.
The mattress meeting at the manufacturer’s US headquarters would be quick, just handshakes and formalities, then I could get back to Carmel and refocus on the rest of my never-ending to-do list, which now included finding a point person to arrange mattress donations.
I hated waste as much as I loved an upgrade, which was why I’d decided to donate our old mattresses to homeless shelters throughout the country.
Much like my brothers, I worked in my business.
None of us were idle figureheads at the individual Ashford Corporation branches we ran—Harrison at Ashford Jets, Logan at Ashford Voyages, and me at Ashford Resorts.
The pressure sometimes felt especially heavy on me since the hotels and resorts were the original foundation of the business, but all three of us worked our asses off.
Sometimes it felt like a competition to see who could put in the most hours, a drive that we’d inherited from our workaholic father, Oliver.
I felt my phone vibrate, and then, a song rang out …
Wake up it’s sunshine baby, the start of our day, sunshine baby, let’s get away!
What the? I slapped at my pocket trying to grab my phone to figure out why it was spewing the most obnoxious song I’d ever heard. When I finally got it free I realized that …
This. Was not. My phone.
Fuck.
The lockscreen was a close-up of a turtle in a flower crown, which was cute, sure, but also weird as hell. It dawned on me that I’d accidentally picked up the dog defender’s phone.
I answered the call warily. “Yes?”
“I have your phone.”
Damn. Even her voice was sexy. A little breathy, like she’d been rushing around, and husky.
“You do,” I agreed. “And I need it back. Now.”
She made an exasperated noise. “That makes two of us. I have a full schedule today and every minute of it is mapped out on that phone.”
A series of notifications went off, as if to underscore her point. I pulled the phone away to glance at them and saw a weather report for the upcoming weekend, a text about a cake, and something about horoscopes.
Ridiculous.
“Well, I’m already twenty five minutes away and going to a meeting that I can’t miss, so you’ll need to come to me.”
That got a shocked laugh in response. “Oh, I will, will I? So I should just blow off the meeting I have scheduled at the resort with a client so I can be your phone jockey?”
“Come after your meeting,” I insisted.
“No, you come to me,” she fired back.
I didn’t have time to bicker with her, even though I was sort of enjoying baiting her. “Fine, let’s agree to meet at a midpoint when we’re both free.”
We bickered as we mapped out logistics until we finally managed to agree on a time and location for the swap.
I disconnected the call and was treated to the ridiculous turtle picture again.
It looked like a wise old lady, like the thing had seen shit and lived to tell the tale.
Was it cute? I squinted as I studied the lockscreen.
Yeah, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, a turtle in a hat definitively qualified as adorable.
Not that I’d tell her that.
I tossed the phone on the seat next to me. It was useless to me. I didn’t even know how to unlock it to access the internet. I refocused on the landscape flying by out my window but was interrupted by the sound of a foghorn.
Over. And over. And over again.
That was her text alert sound? I clawed at the thing to try to lower the damn volume as the texts kept coming in, but I also wanted to see who the hell was blowing up her phone and why.
Florist said she can’t get fresh hydrangeas at this time of year without an extra charge.
The makeup trial I did was awful, who else do you recommend?
How many rooms are left in our room block? Do we need to ask for more?
I need to swap out the salmon app bc my fiancée says it tastes like cat food.
One of the bridesmaid dresses is the wrong color and it’s SO obvious. I’m about to die, call me now pls.
They were all from the same person, labeled as Brittany BZ.
The combination of crises signaled to me that that the annoyingly gorgeous stranger was involved in the wedding industry.
I’d been on the periphery of quite a few wedding-related blow-ups since I first started working at Ashford Resorts as a summer job back when I was in high school.
And recently, I’d seen some from up close and personal, thanks to the emergency situation that had me filling in as the Carmel resort’s wedding planner.
Ground zero for this exact kind of bullshit, which was why hiring someone to fill the role was sitting right at the top of my list. I needed to find a replacement yesterday.
The texts kept coming and I pushed every damn button on the phone, which only made the foghorn tone louder.
“You okay back there?
My driver, Kingston, eyed me in the rearview mirror.
“My phone accidentally got swapped with this piece of garbage and I can’t figure out how to …” I trailed off as I kept slamming buttons, wincing when that made the noise louder still.
“Here, let me,” he reached back for the phone. “I know you hate tech stuff.”
I wanted to throw the phone out the window, but I settled for handing it to him. Within two seconds it went blessedly silent.
“Here ya go,” Kingston said as he passed it back. “You know, I’d be happy to give you a couple of lessons. I’m darn good with phones, I could show you shortcuts and stuff.”
He’d been offering to tech tutor me for ages but I always refused. I knew how to do the basics and that was all I needed. My life was complicated enough already—wherever possible, I liked to keep things simple.
“I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
I couldn’t believe how many alerts had piled up on her phone by the time my meeting was over. The woman had to be part air traffic controller if she could stay on top of everything.
I was almost impressed.
We’d agreed to meet at a midpoint coffee shop, and while I was convinced that she’d keep me waiting, she was actually waiting for me in the parking lot when Kingston pulled in.
“Back corner of the lot, please,” I pointed to where she was standing by an ancient silver Toyota. “I’m meeting that woman.”
Why did she have to be so distractingly gorgeous?
She was a siren, luring us closer, but there was no way I was going to wind up shipwrecked.
Then again … that fucking body. Dangerous curves ahead.
She had her arms crossed to convey how pissy she was about our little exchange, which pushed her phenomenal breasts to the point of nearly spilling out the top of her white sundress.
How was I going to keep from staring at them?
I’d already been up close and personal with her legs, but as we approached her, I felt like I could really take them in.
They were strong, with muscular calves that convinced me that she had to be a runner.
And then there was that face. It was a mix of adorable and deadly, with a plush, kissable mouth and eyes that could go from alluring to deadly in seconds.
Who was I kidding? I could see that she was fuming at a distance. I locked in for the deadly treatment to come.
“Damn,” Kingston said under his breath as he pulled up next to her.
Exactly.
She raised an eyebrow when I emerged from the back of the car.
“Well, well, aren’t you punctual?” she said. “Shocking.”
“I try.” I pulled the phone from my pocket. “You have the most obnoxious phone I’ve ever encountered, and I pity the people around you who are subjected to noise.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out my phone. “And yours was basically silent, so I guess you’re a man of leisure. Must be nice.”
“Hardly,” I laughed as we made the swap. “I just prefer to communicate via email.”
Her eyes bugged out. “What are you, seventy years old? Email?”
I refused to admit to her that I used email because I understood it. It didn’t matter that I’d basically grown up with cell phones. They’d never felt right to me.
And I would never, ever admit out loud that I hated technology because I couldn’t quite master it.
The exchange was complete but for some reason we stood blinking at one another in the bright sun, like we had unfinished business.
I pointed to her phone. “Someone named Brittany is very eager to reach you. Something about makeup, and flowers, and cat food.”
“You read my texts?” Her voice was shrill.
“How could I not? They came up on your lockscreen when I was trying to figure out how to silence that annoying foghorn sound.”
“Well, if we’re coming clean about snooping, your HR department wants you to figure your crap out before you try to fire that guy. Sounds like you’ve got an ax to grind with him without a reason.” She frowned at me. “That tracks.”
I strode closer to her. “Oh, you think so? I guess it won’t matter to you that he’s been sexually harassing one of our reservation specialists.
The only proof we have is her word. I trust her, but judging from the message you must have seen from my legal team, they’re continuing to say we need concrete proof.
” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Still want to judge me?”
She snapped her mouth shut. “Oh.”
“Yeah, exactly. Don’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Well, sometimes people need to speak up. Like what happened with that poor old lady and her dogs. She needed an advocate and I was happy to step in.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Those damn dogs have been terrorizing—”
She scoffed at me. “Oh, come on. Terrorizing? Sure, they’re rowdy, but it’s not like they’re feral.
They just need more exercise. You work for a high end resort, if you truly wanted to make a longtime guest feel welcomed you could offer her support.
I bet the concierge has a dog walking contact that could spend a few hours wearing them out. ”
She clearly had no idea who she was dealing with. She thought I worked for the resort? Hysterical.
But … her idea wasn’t actually ridiculous.
In fact, it seemed pretty solid, and I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it.
I was in the business of delighting people, present company excluded, and Mrs. Barclay had been staying with us since before her husband passed.
They’d had one relatively well-mannered dog together, and she’d added the other two to fill the void in her life after losing him.
The dogs were her reason to get up every day.
I didn’t want to get into it with her. “What’s with the turtle?”
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“On your lockscreen. The turtle with the flowers.”
“An old friend. Don’t worry about it.”
We stood in the parking lot in a silent stalemate, not sure how to end our unpleasant run-in. I had plenty I needed to deal with back at the resort, yet …
“What?” she demanded.
I must’ve been staring. “Nothing. Do you need anything else, or are we good?”
“I’m good. Not so sure about you, though. You might want to look into some anger management training. Or maybe puppy exposure therapy, so you can actually recognize when they’re being playful instead of assuming the worst.”
I fought not to bristle. I wasn’t used to being taken to task like this…
but more than that, I wasn’t used to needing it.
Usually, I had a much better grip on my temper.
She’d caught me in a rare off-kilter moment.
But now, my temper had cooled, and I was able to see things clearly again.
Mrs. Barclay was likely still grieving her husband and using her dogs to fill the void.
I understood firsthand how losing a loved one could alter the brain chemistry.
I pushed the thought out of my head, because this wasn’t the time to stir up memories of my mother.
No, I needed to stay focused on the distractingly gorgeous woman in front of me.
One of us needed to walk away. We were done with each other, hopefully for forever, but I felt like my feet were cemented in place.
It was the way she was looking up at me.
She didn’t like me one bit, that much was obvious, but the way her eyes lingered on me felt almost like appreciation.
It was mutual. Between her perfect chestnut ringlets and porcelain skin, she looked like she’d stepped out of a painting.
And the way she kept biting her full bottom lip?
Ridiculously adorable. I dared to let my eyes dip to her tantalizing breasts for just a split second and heard her make an exasperated noise.
“That’s it, I’m out,” she said. “Have a nice life, and be kind to animals from now on.”
I tried to come up with a snappy comeback as she stomped back to her car but I was left uncharacteristically speechless.
Didn’t matter. Our paths would never cross again.